General discussion of SQL Topics; aimed for the novice-intermediate level Microsoft SQL Server User. Currently focuses on using SQL Server 2005.

Friday, August 22, 2008

VS/SQL 2008 Developers need more space!

I’m not just talking about needing a larger office (although, that couldn’t hurt). I’m talking about hard drive space!

With the release of SQL Server 2008; I’ve officially moved over my trusty development machine to the latest and greatest MS technology, Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition and SQL Server 2008 Developer Edition.

Before you do the same, make sure you have plenty of Hard Drive space[1]. If you already have Visual Studio 2008 installed and then you try to install SQL 2008 you’ll get a friendly little message that states you MUST have VS 2008 Service Pack 1 installed. I’m not quite sure why you MUST have VS 2008 SP 1 installed to run SQL Server 2008 and VS 2008 on the same machine; but, if I do find a reason (other than the guesses of to enable some sort of feature or the ability for the two applications to see each other) I’ll post an update. So, now you know the approximate hard drive space it will take to install these applications.

Here is a simple break down of the hard drive space requirement for each product I installed:

Product Name Hard Drive Space Required URL with Hard Drive Requirement Specifications
Visual Studio 2008 (Professional Edition) 2.2 GB http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vs2008/products/bb894726.aspx
Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 3.8 GB (plus 600 MB on installed Hard Drive for VS 2008) http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/2/8/A2807F78-C861-4B66-9B31-9205C3F22252/VS2008SP1Readme.htm
SQL Server 2008 (Developer Edition) 2.0 GB (required even if installing components to other hard drives) http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143506.aspx

As you can see, VS 2008 SP 1 is no small update. Also note that these hard drive space requirements are based on installing all features/options of each application and the final installation space used will typically be smaller than the requirements specifications. Requirements typically include space required for temporary files during installation of the product.

This comes to a total of around 8 GB of space during installation, and around 6.5 GB upon completion of installation. This, of course, does not include any project files, database files or add-ons.

What if hard drive space is a premium and you just want to test out these new applications? How do you use less space? The simplest way is to use the Express editions of each product and only install the languages/features you absolutely need or want to use/learn. A language such as C++ being installed for a developer who only knows and uses VB would seem pointless, unless that developer is intending to learn and develop with C++.

Is there a way to bypass the requirement to install VS 2008 SP 1? Well, I haven’t tried it myself; but, conceptually, if you install SQL 2008 first, then install VS 2008 you won’t get any messages or requirements during either product installation to have SP 1 installed. Now, that doesn’t mean that VS and SQL will play nice with each other. It also doesn’t mean that you won’t get some sort of message or error at a later time stating that you need to install SP 1. As mentioned earlier, I don’t know why SQL 2008 installation requires VS 2008 SP 1 to be installed with a machine that has VS 2008; I’d imagine there is a good reason though. Try at your own risk.

Until next time, Happy Coding!


[1] The installation hard drive size requirement is based on my personal experience and may vary per installation.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

SQL Server 2008 Officially RTM!

On August 11, 2008 Microsoft announced through their MSDN Flash newsletter that SQL Server 2008 has been RTM (Released To Manufacturing). This has been a long awaited release for many of us in the SQL community! Congratulations to Buck Woody and the many, many others on the SQL development team on this release!

While August 11, 2008 is probably the official RTM date, those of you that have an MSDN subscription may have been enjoying the RTM a week earlier (August 6th, 2008 through the MSDN Subscriptions website) as announced by Buck Woody's blog (Carpe Datum). You can view the post at: http://blogs.msdn.com/buckwoody/archive/2008/08/06/news-flass-sql-server-2008-is-here.aspx.

Undoubtedly, you can find many blogs and posts on the new features of SQL Server 2008. This looks to have a great improvement on SQL Server 2005; in just about every area. There is improvement on security, developing, and administering; to name a few. There seems to be a little bit of something for everyone to get excited about, ranging from Business Intelligence for the enterprise users to Intellisense in TSQL syntax for the programming DBA to Resource Governing for the IT Administrators.

I look forward to using SQL Server 2008, and to enjoying a little more easily administrated database with tons of new features, flexibility, and control!

Until next time...Happy Coding!